Europe is at a critical turning point in its history. The American shield is receding, Ukraine risks being abandoned, Russia strengthened.
Washington became the court of Nero, an incendiary emperor, submissive courtiers and a ketamine-fuelled jester in charge of purging the civil service.
It is a tragedy for the free world, but it is first and foremost a tragedy for the United States. Trump's message is that there is no point in being his ally since he will not defend you, he will impose higher customs duties on you than on his enemies and he will threaten to seize your territories while supporting the dictatorships that invade you.
The king of the deal is showing what the art of the deal is all about. He thinks he will intimidate China by kowtowing to Putin, but Xi Jinping, before such a debacle, is undoubtedly stepping up preparations for the invasion of Taiwan.
Never in history has a president of the United States surrendered to the enemy. Never has one supported an aggressor against an ally. Never has anyone trampled on the US Constitution, issued so many illegal decrees, dismissed judges who could prevent him from doing so, summarily sacked the military high command, weakened all the checks and balances and taken control of the social networks.
This is not an illiberal drift, it is the beginning of the confiscation of democracy. Let us remember that it took only one month, three weeks and two days to bring down the Weimar Republic and its Constitution.
I have faith in the strength of American democracy and the country is already protesting. But in one month, Trump has done more damage to America than in the four years of his last presidency. We were at war against a dictator; we are now fighting a dictator supported by a traitor.
A week ago, just as Trump was placing his hand on Macron's back at the White House, the United States voted at the UN with Russia and North Korea against the Europeans calling for the departure of Russian troops.
Two days later, in the Oval Office, the military service dodger gave war hero Zelensky lessons in morality and strategy before dismissing him like a lackey, ordering him to submit or resign.
Last night, he took one-step further into infamy by cancelling the promised arms delivery. How can we face this betrayal? The answer is simple: we must stand up to it.
And first of all, make no mistake. Ukraine's defeat would be Europe's defeat. The Baltic States, Georgia and Moldova are already on the list. Putin's goal is a return to Yalta, where half the continent was ceded to Stalin.
The countries of the South are waiting for the resolution of the conflict to decide whether they should continue to respect Europe or whether they are now free to trample on it.
What Putin wants is the end of the order established by the United States and their allies 80 years ago, based on the fundamental principle whereby the acquisition of territory by force is prohibited.
This idea is at the very root of the UN, where today the Americans vote in favour of the aggressor and against the victim, because Trump's vision coincides with that of Putin: a return to spheres of influence, with the great powers dictating the fate of small countries.
reenland, Panama and Canada are mine, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eastern Europe are yours, and Taiwan and the China Sea are his.
At the Gulf of Mar-a-Lago oligarchs' soirées, this is referred to as “diplomatic realism”.
So we are alone. But the argument that Putin is unstoppable is false. Contrary to Kremlin propaganda, Russia is in a precarious state. In three years, the supposedly second-strongest army in the world has only managed to scrape together the crumbs from a country with a third of its population.
Interest rates at 25%, the collapse of foreign exchange and gold reserves, the demographic collapse show that it is on the brink. The American boost to Putin is the biggest strategic error ever committed during a war.
The shock was violent, but it had a virtue. The Europeans emerged from denial. They understood in a single day in Munich that the survival of Ukraine and the future of Europe are in their hands and that they have three imperatives.
Accelerate military aid to Ukraine to ensure its survival, compensating for the American desertion, and of course to impose its presence and that of Europe in all negotiations.
It will be expensive. The taboo surrounding the use of frozen Russian assets will have to be broken. Moscow's accomplices within Europe will have to be circumvented by a coalition of only willing countries, including of course the United Kingdom.
Secondly, to demand that any agreement be accompanied by the return of kidnapped children and prisoners along with absolute guarantees of security. After Budapest, Georgia and Minsk, we know what agreements with Putin are actually worth. These guarantees require sufficient military force to prevent a new invasion.
Finally, and most urgently, because this is what will take the most time, we need to build up the European defence that has been neglected in favour of the American umbrella since 1945 and scuttled since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
It is a Herculean task, but the leaders of today's democratic Europe will be judged and remembered in History on the basis of its success or failure.
Friedrich Merz has just declared that Europe needs its own military alliance. This is recognition that France has been right for decades in advocating strategic autonomy.
It remains to be built. This will require massive investment, strengthening the European Defence Fund outside the Maastricht debt criteria, harmonising weapons and ammunition systems, accelerating the entry of Ukraine, which today has the largest army in Europe, into the Union, rethinking the place and conditions of nuclear deterrence based on French and British capabilities, and reviving the missile defence and satellite programmes.
The plan announced yesterday by Ursula von der Leyen is a very good starting point. And it will require much more.
Europe will only become a military power again by regaining its industrial power. In a word, the Draghi report must be applied. Thoroughly.
But the real rearmament of Europe is its moral rearmament.
We must convince public opinion in the face of war weariness and fear, and especially in the face of Putin's stooges, the far right and the far left.
They were still arguing yesterday in the National Assembly against European unity, against European defence.
They say they want peace. What neither they nor Trump say is that their peace is surrender, the peace of defeat, the replacement of de Gaulle Zelensky by a Ukrainian Pétain in Putin's pocket.
The peace of the collaborators who have refused any aid to the Ukrainians for three years.
Is this the end of the Atlantic Alliance? Quite possibly. But in the last few days, the public humiliation of Zelensky and all the crazy decisions made over the last month have finally made the Americans react.
Polls are falling. Republican elected representatives are greeted by hostile crowds in their constituencies. Even Fox News is becoming critical.
The Trumpists are no longer holding sway. They control the executive, the parliament, the supreme court and the social networks. But in American history, freedom fighters have always won. And they are beginning to stand up again.
Ukraine's fate is being decided in the trenches, but it also depends on those in the United States who want to defend democracy, just as it depends here on our ability to unite Europeans, to find the means for their common defence, and to make Europe once again the power it once was in history and which it is hesitating to become again.
Our parents defeated fascism and communism at the cost of great sacrifice.
The task of our generation is to defeat the totalitarianisms of the 21st century.
Long live a free Ukraine, long live a democratic Europe.